1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sorting device and a sorting method, more particularly, to a sorting device and a sorting method for sorting a target biological analyte.
2. Description of Related Art
The research of the interaction between biomolecules and their characteristics (such as antibodies, antigens, proteins, enzymes, metabolites, nucleic acids, drugs, and deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA)) becomes a major topic in various fields (such as drug development, genetic engineering, biochemistry, biotechnology, and molecular biology, etc.).
Take bacteriophage as an example, phage display is a technique that has been widely used. The main advantage of phage display is to provide a substantially physical connection for the phenotype and the genotype of the bacteriophage, and may be produced in large quantities. For example, the DNA sequence of the protein analyte may be spliced to the DNA sequence of the coat protein of the bacteriophage, therefore, when the protein analyte is successfully expressed on the surface of the bacteriophage through the coat protein of the bacteriophage, the protein analyte can be sorted together with the bacteriophage.
Currently, the most commonly used method for sorting bacteriophages is the biopanning process, which generally consists of the following steps: 1) fixing antigen molecules onto a solid surface, a column, or a biosensor chip (such as a Biacore sensor chip), wherein the antigen may seize positive strains of bacteriophages that have high affinity for the antigen; 2) removing unbound or negative strains of bacteriophages after extensive washing; 3) eluting bound bacteriophages subsequently using an elution buffer; and 4) amplifying the eluted bacteriophages using bacteria for hosts and conducting further rounds of affinity enrichment if needed. Usually, three to five repeated rounds of capture, wash, and amplification steps must be carried out in order to attain desired sorting efficiency. However, the total amount of time required to complete the process of biopanning can be longer than a month.
Accordingly, sorting bacteriophage is time-consuming and costly due to the process of biopanning and the subsequent analysis and evaluation processes, such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and DNA sequencing.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a simple, fast and efficient sorting platform for sorting a target biological analyte from a biological sample.